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MARCO WERMAN: With me on the line from Washington D.C. is Muna Shikaki, correspondent for the Arabic language television channel Al Arabiya. Muna, it sounds like some of the detainees from Guantanamo will go through military tribunals after all. How big is this story for Al-Arabiya?

MUNA SHIKAKI: Well, anything having to do with terrorism, with Arabs, with Muslims is a big issue for us. This definitely makes it to the first 15 minutes of the broadcast, but I don't think that we consider it as this big change in what Obama is trying to do. People in the Arab world are generally split. In general, they support Obama but they're split between people who think that Obama is going to really be able to make change but that it takes time, and there are others who view Obama as being way to the left of the American political spectrum and that the American political establishment won't let him do what he wants to do even though they trust Obama personally.

WERMAN: Well, also with us from Washington is Gregor Schmitz, a correspondent for the German magazine Der Speigel. Gregor, how are you reporting this story? Is there outrage over this in Germany?

GREGOR SCHMITZ: People are very interested in this story and I think for a number of reasons. And that is also related to the story earlier this week when Obama decided not to release torture pictures. I think it is just very compelling in a way. It's just something everybody can relate to. I mean, over the course of this week, it was this freak show of the Bush years coming back, in a way, for the Europeans. You saw Dick Cheney on the airwaves again, criticizing Obama for his handling of the war on terror -- and for Europeans, he's just the embodiment of evil and cynicism. So people are interested in that story. I think overall, Europeans are beginning to realize that this is a very more complex debate than they have proceeded over the past years, because I think it was very easy to blame everything on Bush and his obvious abuse of power. And now people are looking at the issues again, and they realize this debate will be with us for really long time to come. I found it very interesting the way, for example, the Pelosi controversy yesterday was covered. I spoke with a colleague –

WERMAN: You're referring to the Speaker of the House saying that she was ill informed by the CIA on waterboarding?

SCHMITZ: Right. I spoke with a colleague from the New York Times this morning, and he told me he had to take some heat because they didn't put it on the front page. But in Europe, for example, there was hardly any coverage at all, which I found a little surprising because after all, she is the Speaker of the House and she obviously accused the CIA of lying. So I think people are beginning to realize that these legal issues are very, very tricky, and even if you have a more popular US President, these debates will stick with us.

WERMAN: Muna Shikaki, Gregor Schmitz called it kind of a “freak show” this week. How did you report the story of Nancy Pelosi versus the CIA yesterday?

SHIKAKI: That was definitely covered as a story, but I think in the Arab world, generally this is not causing the same kind of waves that Abu Ghraib when the pictures actually came out, or when Guantanamo was opened – I think that was a completely different level. I think there's less outrage now because it is Obama and people do still have feelings that he will be able to change things. But in general, when it comes to covering these issues, covering the terror trials in Guantanamo, you know, people in the Arab world and governments in the Arab world torture people and you have trials that go on for like three hours where somebody gets executed afterward. So you know, you can't really compare between the two. But the reason why people get outraged at the United States is a) they consider it a higher standard, and b) you have a lot more transparency here. The courts are not covered the same way. We covered the terror trials here in very great detail.

WERMAN: Gregor Schmidt with Der Spiegel, I'm wondering how these kind of perceptible shifts in White House policy might be damaging President Obama's popularity in Germany? Or is he still popular there when he visited last year as “candidate” Obama?

SCHMITZ: Well, it's interesting. We were actually discussing this this morning about whether we should run a story next week on how Germans and Europeans are becoming disillusionized with President. I think there is -- as I said, it is about to sink in that you can have a very popular American president, but he's still an American president. He's not the German president. He's not European president. That was actually a message that Obama's advisors communicated very strongly before that Berlin visit last year – that they were trying to point out to the Europeans that, “You might be disappointed over the next few years because he is still an American president.” The story I wanted to report actually this week before I got kind of distracted by the torture photos was a debate that might actually be much more interesting for trans-Atlantic relations and the whole torture debate, and that is climate change bill that is currently being discussed in the House. And the Democrats are having a very, very hard time to push that bill through. If you look at all the opinion polls, Americans just don't care about climate change anymore. They care about jobs; they care about the economy. That is something that in a way is true in Europe, too. But I think if Obama says that he is pushing for that bill but it fails already in the House now over the next month, that might be a real problem for trans-Atlantic relations. In Germany, because you asked specifically about Germany, in the public the support is so overwhelming, I think he would have won – I think McCain would have gotten about 8 percent of the vote had Germans been allowed to vote. So I think he's still very popular.

WERMAN: Gregor Schmitz, correspondent for Der Spiegel magazine, and Muna Shikaki, correspondent for Al-Arabiya television, thank you both very much for speaking with us.

SCHMITZ: Thank you.

SHIKAKI: Thank you.

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